Excerpt from Wifedom by Anna Funder, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Orwell's thoughts are painful to read. Women disgust him; he disgusts himself. He's paranoid, feeling he's been tricked by a politicosexual conspiracy of filthy women 'imposing' a false 'picture of themselves' on the world. He sees women – as wives – in terms of what they do for him, or 'demand' of him. Not enough cleaning; too much sex. How was it, then, for her? My first guess: too much cleaning and not enough, or not good enough, sex.

This is how I moved from the work to the life, and from the man to the wife.

Excerpted from Wifedom by Anna Funder. Copyright © 2023 by Anna Funder. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.